The Decoy Bride

by Lizzie Shane

  “She isn’t here?” the taller woman asked, though the answer was obvious.

  “No.” The single word sounded inexplicably guilty to his ears.

  Or maybe explicably guilty. Since just last night Mel had told him to keep his distance and not half an hour later he’d been making out with the woman in question.

  “Huh.” Mel departed as abruptly as she’d arrived—leaving Cross alone with his tangled thoughts.

  He started to follow—Bree had to be in the villa because the sensors hadn’t gone off, he could help Mel find her—but his cell phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket instead.

  Mayor Mike.

  He hadn’t realized he’d been expecting to see his mother’s number until he saw the mayor’s. It was early in Iowa. Before dawn. But Mayor Mike was putting in long hours leading up to the dedication.

  The dedication.

  Suddenly Cross felt sick at the idea of a two day ceremony honoring his father. Was this why his mother hadn’t wanted to go? Because of his half-sister? But that didn’t make any sense because she’d never had any trouble honoring his father in the past. Why start now?

  Did anyone else know the truth? Did the rest of the town? His mother had said they kept things quiet—what did that mean? That no one knew? Or that they all kept the secret?

  He’d wondered, last night in the middle of the night when nothing seemed clear, if he was overreacting to the news that his father had cheated. He knew a lot of his teammates had cheated on their wives—the culture of professional sports didn’t exactly discourage it. He’d never felt the same sense of betrayal from learning about a teammate’s infidelity. So why should he react so strongly to learning the truth about a father he’d never really known—

  But that was it right there. He’d never really known his father. He’d only had the stories. Growing up there had been two role models in his house—his mother and the legend of his father. To find out the legend was a lie…he couldn’t help wonder what else about his life was a lie.

  His mother hadn’t told him about the other woman. The less-than-perfect aspects of his father’s legacy. Without that letter, he might never have known. He’d Googled in the middle of the night—his father’s name, his half-sister’s name—and found nothing. The story, if there ever had been one, had been buried. All the world knew was his father, the god.

  Big Aaron. Pride of Harris. Perfect husband. Perfect father. Best ball player ever to live in the history of ball players.

  Why had his mother continued to perpetuate the myth, why had she been a part of what now seemed like a giant conspiracy to reshape his father into a decent human being, and why should they honor the man if everything about his life was a lie?

  What else didn’t he know about the man?

  The ringing stopped, the call going to voicemail, and Cross made no move to listen to it. He couldn’t handle Mayor Mike right now. Couldn’t handle the enthusiasm. Couldn’t handle the idea of everything he’d done in the name of his father since he left the NFL, pouring money into Harris in his name.

  The name of a man he didn’t even know.

  He pocketed his phone and returned to the front of the house to focus on the job. That was what he was good at. The best at, damn it.

  The main floor was still quiet. No sign of Bree. Though he found Mel on the patio with her breakfast, tapping away on her tablet, when he went out to check the perimeter security one more time.

  She looked up when he opened the patio door—and he tried not to let the memory of what had happened the last time he’d been out here show on his face. “The eagle has landed,” she said dryly.

  Cross frowned as he took a seat opposite her. “What does that mean?”

  “It means there’s been a sudden surge of new arrivals on the other side of the resort. Dominique called. Apparently the resort policy is not to refuse a room to anyone as long as they don’t bother other guests or try to infiltrate the VIP side, but she wanted to make sure Maggie didn’t have any restraining orders against members of the press that they should be aware of.” She glanced back down at her tablet. “I’ve been checking various travel sites as well and it’s suddenly gotten very hard to find space at the closest resorts on the main island—the ones which would have the easiest boat access to the villa. Looks like we’re about to be under siege.”

  She smiled smugly—and Cross reminded himself that this was exactly what they wanted. They wanted the parasites to swarm around them, because if they were here, they weren’t in Fiji.

  But he’d have to step up his game and be even more diligent about Bree’s safety with so many of the bastards nearby looking to get a shot of her. And any further kisses—on the patio or otherwise—were absolutely out of the question. Not that he’d been planning more kissing.

  It was game time. And he knew better than to let himself get distracted on game day.

  *

  If Bree had felt trapped in the gorgeous villa before, that was nothing compared to the intense feeling of claustrophobia she had now.

  She could tell herself it was only because they were under siege and her already controlled movements had been restricted even more, but she was afraid it had more to do with him. Cross. Now that she’d kissed him, her edgy awareness of him seemed to have heightened to ridiculous levels.

  And it didn’t help that her stupid heart felt like it knew him after the way he’d shared himself last night. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything. To lose herself inside his perspective. To wallow in getting to know him—

  But that wasn’t a good idea. Even if she didn’t have that niggling voice in the back of her mind telling her he’d only kissed her because he saw Maggie when he looked at her.

  At least they hadn’t been caught.

  If some early bird paparazzo had managed to get a shot of them in the shadows of the patio last night, the story doubtless would have broken by the time she woke up—late and mildly hungover after she polished off the rest of the bottle of champagne. So they were safe on that front. Thank God. Though they’d have to be much more careful now that the buzzards were circling.

  Not that they would have anything to be careful of. Not that it would ever happen again. Obviously it wouldn’t happen again. This was not the time to be screwing up her shot at sixty K with a stupid infatuation.

  In the glaring light of morning, her mistake was all too clear. She’d let the stress of the situation and the false sense of intimacy get to her. She’d never been particularly good at managing pressure—though this was the first time she’d reacted with a full frontal kiss assault.

  She just needed to relax—maybe she could talk Mel into smuggling her in a camera. That would calm her down faster than anything else. Give her something to focus on. Maybe Maggie was taking up an interest in photography. Or doing research for a role. There were dozens of reasons why Maggie Tate might need a camera.

  When she found Mel and asked her, the manager seemed puzzled by the request—as if she couldn’t imagine what Bree would want to take pictures of while she was under glorified house arrest—but she agreed to look into it for her, after reminding her for the fifth time to stay inside and keep her head down. Apparently they didn’t want to tease the paparazzi with her presence yet, instead frustrating the bastards and making them frantic to get the shot—which was fine with Bree, since she didn’t exactly want her hangover face splashed over every tabloid in America and neither did Maggie.

  Several “tourists” with telephoto lenses had already been caught trying to sneak onto the property, but hunkering down inside the house just made her feel restless. She read one of the books the resort had stocked the bookshelves with—but her focus only lasted for a few minutes at a time and she couldn’t get absorbed in the story. She worked out—twice—but even the endorphins from running couldn’t counter the tension that seeped into her blood whenever she entered the fitness center, as if some part of her was constantly waiting for Cross to appear.

&nb
sp; Dominique came by that afternoon to discuss more wedding stuff, but Bree’s focus was fragmented and the wildly accommodating wedding planner promised to come back another day.

  And the siege continued.

  The siege of freaking boredom.

  Bree had never been officially diagnosed with any kind of attention disorder. Her very logical, very driven parents didn’t believe in them, didn’t want anyone putting the idea in Bree’s head that she wasn’t capable of focusing perfectly well on her own. Which she appreciated on one level—but there were days she would kill for some freaking Adderall. Days when her brain skipped like a stone on a lake and she couldn’t get it to stop.

  Then Cross walked into the kitchen where she’d been rattling around, shuffling through cupboards in search of inspiration, and all of her focus tightened suddenly on the awkwardness in the air between them.

  Mel had gone off to touch base with the other team on Skype. Kaydee had taken Cecil Two for a walk—since apparently photos of her assistant and her dog were the perfect thing to confirm to the press that Maggie was there without giving them the money shot they wanted.

  But that meant neither of them were there to act as a buffer—and Bree needed a buffer.

  He looked good. Better than good. Better than a man had a right to look. His skin was a bit more golden than it had been when they first arrived on the island, which complimented the dark array of browns in his eyes. His hair was two shades lighter, with more streaks of true platinum blonde in the mix. It had grown a little longer—still short, but starting to reveal a natural waviness. With his long golden lashes, there was something of the sexy surfer about him, giving him the illusion of being relaxed—and she knew that was an illusion. His jaw was as tight as ever, his shoulders bunched and his walk the strong, purposeful stride of a man who moved through the world with strength and focus.

  Totally unlike her.

  She’d dated jocks in high school and things had always ended predictably enough—with her feeling like she wasn’t quite right. Wasn’t quite good enough. She didn’t need any more of that feeling, so it was just as well she and Cross would be staying away from one another.

  Except he seemed to have missed the keep-your-distance memo when he leaned against the island and said, “Look…about last night…”

  “We don’t have to discuss it,” she said quickly, flicking a glance toward the stairway Mel had disappeared up.

  “I know the difference,” he said, the words seeming heavy with meaning and it took her a moment to figure out what he meant.

  She’d accused him of not knowing who he was kissing. Not knowing the difference between her and Maggie. “I know you do,” she assured him, though she knew nothing of the kind. “But we still can’t…there are other reasons.”

  “I know. I completely agree,” he said with demoralizing alacrity. “I just didn’t want you to think—”

  “I don’t. We’re good.”

  She had a job to do. He had a job to do. End of story.

  Whatever she’d thought she felt last night was only the product of stress and too much moonlight. Not to mention the champagne. Though admittedly she hadn’t had much before the kiss. Still. It couldn’t happen again. She couldn’t be jeopardizing her future for a silly flirtation with no future anyway. And guys like Cross didn’t want girls like Bree. Not for keeps.

  He nodded, hands thrust deep into his pockets. “I should probably…” He didn’t say what he should probably do, vaguely indicating the rest of the house, as if there was pressing work for him there.

  “Good idea.” Her gaze went to the blinds that blocked every window. As far as they knew, there were no paparazzi physically within telephoto distance of the villa, but Mel and Cross had decided better safe than sorry, closing up the indoor-outdoor villa like they were battening down for a hurricane.

  It was pretty insane, the degree to which Maggie’s privacy was invaded when she wasn’t even the source of a particular scandal. No wonder she’d wanted to hire Bree to distract the paparazzi from her wedding.

  Five days down, sixteen to go. Then Bree could go back to being invisible behind the lens of her camera, sixty thousand dollars richer. She could handle two weeks of sexual frustration and boredom mania. Easy.

  Cross began to move silently out of the room and she watched him go, irrationally hypnotized by the sight of him. A door slammed upstairs, making her jump and jerk her gaze guiltily away, toward the stairs as Mel appeared. She lifted her tablet above her head, fury sharpening the lines of her face.

  “What the fuck did you do?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Apparently it took longer for a photo of an illicit kiss to hit the tabloids than Bree had thought.

  She sat in the theatre room—the villa’s other windowless space, which had become their war room—sinking down into the plush couch and doing her best to look invisible as Mel glowered at everything and Cross paced.

  “It had to be Kaydee,” Cross announced as he stalked from one end of the room to the other. Bree grabbed the ottoman, pulling it out of his way so he could pace unimpeded. “From the angle, the shot had to have been taken from inside the house. Cecil even barked at the door. He must have been barking at her. All of the resort staff had left for the night. So if you didn’t take it—”

  Mel looked at him as if the suggestion was insultingly stupid. Kaydee hadn’t been invited to the damage control meeting, still on her walk with Cecil Two, oblivious to the drama inside.

  “I hope she was well compensated for that shot, because she’s about to be fired.” Mel glared at both of them, as if implying that Kaydee might not be the only one. “Though she shouldn’t have had anything to shoot.”

  Bree sank down, trying to think invisible thoughts. They were waiting for a Skype call from Maggie—apparently Cross’s colleague Candy was doing something on their end to ensure the call would be one hundred percent secure—and the waiting was horrible.

  She’d almost definitely lost her job. She’d be lucky if she didn’t get sued for breach of contract, damaging Maggie’s reputation like this, but the ax hadn’t fallen yet. It wasn’t official. Not until Maggie said the words—and waiting for her to say them was making Bree feel physically ill.

  “The odds of her getting the shot without us seeing her were extreme,” Cross argued, still pacing.

  “And yet she got it.”

  Yes, she had. Several shots, actually. One of a couple locked in a kiss that could not be mistaken for anything but raw and sexual—but neither of them was clearly identifiable in that photo so another had accompanied it. Taken through the living room window. His hands on her face, her expression dazed as she gazed up at him in the moments after the kiss—her face clearly visible. Maggie’s face.

  Cross’s identity was less certain—though it was alleged in the accompanying article. But regardless of who the man kissing Maggie Tate was, it certainly wasn’t Demarco Whitten. Not tall enough. Without Demarco’s close-shaved head. And even in night vision green, the fact that his skin was the wrong hue was blindingly clear.

  Demarco Whitten. The groom of the freaking wedding she was supposed to be planning.

  How could she have screwed up so epically? How hard was it to pretend to be Maggie Tate for three weeks and keep her freaking lips to herself? What had she been thinking? Because she couldn’t blame Cross. She was the one who had instigated the kiss. Even after he’d warned her that she could never let her guard down here. Even after Mel had warned her to keep her distance.

  She’d said as much as soon as Mel showed them the pictures. It was my fault. Don’t blame Cross. But Mel seemed determined to blame both of them, and Cross—when he wasn’t obsessing over how Kaydee could have gotten the shot—was equally willing to claim his share of the blame. I knew better, he’d growled—and Bree had felt even worse.

  He’d known better. And she’d ruined both of their chances.

  She knew how important his job was to him. It was his entire freaking
identity and she’d savaged his reputation as effectively as if she’d set out to do it.

  Mel’s laptop, which she’d set up on the theatre room’s low faux-stone drink table, trilled suddenly, announcing the incoming video call, and Bree cringed, sinking deeper into the couch. Mel took her place in front of the webcam and Cross rerouted his pacing to bring him around so he could see the screen as Mel connected the call.

  Maggie appeared on the screen, flanked by Demarco Whitten and a petite woman with spiky blonde hair whom Bree mentally placed as Candy. The movie star looked good—tanned and beautiful. And pissed. Very, very pissed.

  Maggie’s angry turquoise eyes instantly locked on her. “What the hell, Bree?”

  Bree cringed, obviously not doing nearly as good a job as she might have hoped at being invisible. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, of course you are,” Maggie said, “but what am I supposed to do with that? The entire world thinks I’m making out with my bodyguard.”

  Bree stiffened on a surge of irrational defensiveness on Cross’s behalf. As if he was just a bodyguard…

  “It had to have been Kaydee,” Mel interjected, surprising Bree with her defense. “No one else could have gotten the shot, so obviously she’ll be fired—”

  “No,” Maggie interrupted quickly. “Kaydee stays. We might still be able to use her. This isn’t about blame. It’s about damage control. What do we do?”

  A beat of silence followed the question, and Bree knew she ought to keep her mouth shut and just be relieved that she hadn’t already been fired, but if the last twenty-four hours had proven anything it was that she was terrible at doing what she should do. “We could lean into it,” she blurted.

  There was a flicker of lag in the video feed and then Maggie’s voice came through, staticky and broken. “What does that mean?”

  Bree thought fast, making it up as she went. “We were supposed to distract people from your wedding, right? So we really distract people from your wedding,” she said. “We post a press release that you and Demarco have broken up and I mope around here looking heartbroken. Meanwhile, you two are getting hitched five thousand miles away.” And it had the added bonus that she stopped lying to the people of the Luxe resort about holding a wedding there. No more stringing poor Dominique along. “We’d have to reveal that you had a double at the end of it, and you probably wouldn’t be able to use me again, but for now…”